Online exhibition, Teaching with Mass-Market Paperbacks.

The Phantom of the Opera by
Gaston Leroux, part of the
UNC Libraries exhibition

The UNC Libraries online exhibition "Teaching with Mass-Market Paperbacks" draws on the paperback collection of UNC Chapel Hill to assist instructors who wish to use such works in their classroom. Some sample lesson plans are provided. Mystery books include assorted works by Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler; The Blue Geranium by Dolan Birkley (aka Dolores Hitchens); The Couch by Robert Bloch; Honeymoon in Hell by Fredric Brown; Cassidy's Girl by David Goodis; A Taste for Honey by H. F. Heard; I Married a Dead Man and other works by William Irish (aka Cornell Woolrich); and Sorry, Wrong Number by Allan Ullman and Lucille Fletcher (as the cover notes: "She Dialed .. D-E-A-T-H").

Virtual mystery plays from the Jewel Theatre Co.

The Jewel Theatre Company in Santa Cruz has been performing virtual radio plays. Some of the mystery-related ones:

"The Hitch-Hiker" by Lucille Fletcher (a man driving cross-country keeps seeing the same mysterious man)

The Whistler: Stranger in the House (a man comes home after six years, but is he who he says he is?) 

   

The Mysterious Traveler: The Good Die Young by Robert Arthur and David Kogan (all is not well between a girl and her new stepmother)

Recent radio production of Sorry, Wrong Number

 

Lucille Fletcher, ca. 1948

You can catch Bay Area Radio Drama's June production of Lucille Fletcher's Sorry, Wrong Number, here.

Homes of local mystery writers.

The website DC Writers' Homes—a project of Humanities DC—features residences of such writers as James M. Cain (6707 44th Ave, University Park, MD), Roald Dahl (2136 R St NW in DC), Rudolph Fisher (1607 S St NW in DC), Lucille Fletcher (3435 8th St S, Arlington, VA), Mary Roberts Rinehart (2419 Massachusetts Ave NW and 2660 Woodley Rd in DC), and Manley Wade Wellman (400 Shepherd St NW in DC).

Mary Roberts Rinehart with chauffeur outside her
home at 2419 Massachusetts Ave NW in
Washington, DC (now the Embassy of Zambia).
ca. 1920s-early 1930s. Library of Congress,
Prints and Photographs Division

New CD: Film Noir at Paramount.

Intrada has recently released Double Indemnity: Film Noir at Paramount, which includes selections from Miklos Rozsa's score for Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity; Hugo Friedhofer's score for Wilder's Ace in the Hole; Franz Waxman's music for Anatole Litvak's Sorry, Wrong Number; Victor Young's music for Byron Haskins's I Walk Alone; Gail Kubik's score for William Wyler's The Desperate Hours; Leith Stevens's music from Michael Curtiz's The Scarlet Hour; and Heinz Roemheld's music from Rudolph Mate's Union Station. (thanks to Film Score Monthly)

 

"Sorry, Wrong Number" added to LOC registry.

Lucille Fletcher's radio play "Sorry, Wrong Number" has been added to the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry. This 1943 episode of Suspense stars Agnes Moorehead as an invalid who overhears something she shouldn't on the telephone line.

From the Vault: Sorry, Wrong Number.

Ad for 1948 film Sorry, Wrong Number

The archival program From the Vault of Pacifica Radio Archives offers an episode from 2003 on Sorry, Wrong Number; Shirley Knight and Ed Asner star in Lucille Fletcher's classic radio drama about a woman who overhears a murder plot that hits close to home. The program includes background on Fletcher (the first wife of film composer Bernard Herrmann), a clip from the first broadcast (in 1943) featuring Agnes Moorehead, and a discussion with Knight.

UCLA: "Exile Noir."

As part of its "Exile Noir" program this month, the UCLA Film & Television Archive plans to screen Bluebeard (1944); The Blue Gardenia (1953); Caught (1949); City That Never Sleeps (1953); The Dark Mirror (1946); Hollow Triumph (1948); Jealousy (1945); The Locket (1946); Sleep, My Love (1948); Sorry, Wrong Number (1948); and Whirlpool (1950).

It also notes the upcoming exhibition that will open at the Skirball Cultural Center on October 23: "Light & Noir: Exiles and Emigres in Hollywood, 1933-1950."

Fletcher's Night Watch (1973).

Elizabeth Taylor and Laurence Harvey reunite after Butterfield 8 in this tale of a woman who has experienced a nervous breakdown and believes a murder has occurred next door. Directed by actor-director Brian G. Hutton (Where Eagles Dare, Kelly's Heroes, High Road to China), Night Watch is based on the play of the same name by Lucille Fletcher (Sorry, Wrong Number; The Hitchhiker).

Happy centenary, Lucille Fletcher.

Inger Stevens in "The Hitch-Hiker"
Twilight Zone, season 1, 1960
(adapt. of Lucille Fletcher's
radio play)

Suspense writer and playwright Lucille Fletcher—best known for the Edgar-winning Sorry, Wrong Number (play, 1944; novel, 1948; adapted for film and TV, 1946, 1948, 1954, 1957, 1962–64, 1968, 1989)—was born today in Brooklyn, NY, in 1912. She wrote nine novels, three plays, and more than a dozen radio plays that include The Hitch-Hiker (1941; broadcast on the Mercury Theater, 1946). Fletcher, the first wife of Hitchcock composer Bernard Herrmann, died in 2000.

Happy birthday, Lucille Fletcher.

Suspense writer Lucille Fletcher, the first wife of Hitchcockian composer Bernard Herrmann, would have turned 95 today. She died in 2000.

Her biggest hit? "Sorry, Wrong Number" (radio play, 1943; screenplay, 1948), in which a bedridden woman overhears the plotting of a murder over the telephone. To listen to the 1943 Suspense version starring Agnes Moorehead, go here.